War on drugs is war on the American people.

Our Government used to be "OF the people, BY the people and FOR the people". Now our Government has become "The Ennemy"!

War on drugs or war on the American people?

Over the last several years, the federal government has
declared wars on poverty, homelessness, illiteracy,
physical and sexual abuse, sex and violence on TV,
teen pregnancy and drugs. To date, though billions of
tax dollars have been thrown into these wars, we have
lost them like we lost in Viet Nam -- and for many of
the same reasons. The federal government uses our
money to fight battles it has never intended to win.

After reading the following, you will agree that your
government is not waging a war on drugs. The war is
on the freedom of the American people.

By The November Coalition

1. The United States has a larger percentage of its
population in prison than any country on Earth. Over 2
million human beings languish behind bars. Well over sixty
percent of federal prisoners, and a significant fraction of
state and local prisoners, are non-violent drug offenders,
mostly first time offenders. Due to the War on Drugs, we
have become the world's leading jailer. One out of 35
Americans is under the control of the Criminal Justice
System. If present incarceration rates hold steady, one out
of 20 Americans, one out of 11 men, and one out of four
black men in this country today can expect to spend some
part of their life in prison.

2. One out of three young African American (ages 18 to
35) men in the United States are in prison or on some form
of supervised release. The Drug War is clearly a race war.
Our country has more African American men in prison
than in college. We call ourselves the Land of the Free, yet
we have a four times higher percentage of Black men in
prison than South Africa at the height of apartheid, an
official national policy of institutionalized racism.

3. One out of nine school-age children has one or both
parents in prison. At the present exponential increase in
incarceration, this number will be one out of four
alarmingly soon. We are breeding an entire generation of
embittered and disenfranchised prison orphans. We are
losing an entire generation of young people.

4. The average sentence for a first time, non-violent drug
offender is longer than the average sentence for rape, child
molestation, bank robbery or manslaughter. As our prisons
rapidly fill to bursting, rapists and murderers are being
given early release to make room for no parole drug
offenders. While law enforcement continues to go after
relatively easy drug violation arrests, every major city in
this country has a record number of unsolved homicides.

5. Every year, 8,000 to 14,000 people die from illegal
drugs in this country. Every year, over 500,000 people die
from legal drugs (Tobacco, liquor and prescriptions). This is
roughly a 50-to-one ratio. Alcohol alone is involved in
seven times more violent crimes than all illegal substances
combined. Yet our government continues to hugely
subsidize alcohol and tobacco, while demonizing those who
would exercise a different choice.

6. It's been empirically shown that education and treatment
is seven times more cost effective than arrest and
incarceration for substance addiction, yet we continue to
spend more tax dollars on prisons than treatment. In this
'Land of Liberty', we spend more money on prisons than
on schools.

We are clearly addicted to mass punishment of consensual
'crimes' on a staggering scale. The sheer magnitude of all
the human misery generated in our government's war on
it's own people is truly terrifying.

7. Federal prosecutors reportedly have a 98 percent
conviction rate, and federal appellate courts reject 98
percent of appeals. The American Bar Association says this
number should be closer to 60-70 percent. Does this mean
that over 30 percent of those jailed are technically or
literally innocent (Do we really trust our government to do
anything with 98 percent efficiency?)? The nearly limitless
and clearly unconstitutional powers that have been handed
to the U.S. Attorneys by Congress is mind blowing in the
extreme. The Bill of Rights is rapidly becoming a fond
memory.

8. If the federal government were to have its way, you can
be given the death penalty for 'trafficking' in two ounces of
marijuana. Former 'Drug Czar' William Bennett (author of
'The Book of Virtues'!) has advocated the public beheading
of convicted drug offenders. LA Police Chief Daryl Gates
has publicly stated that casual drug users should be taken
from the court room and summarily executed. We are
rapidly approaching a totalitarian police state, where
absolute power flows directly from wealth, and any
deviation from the officially mandated status quo can mean
incarceration, torture or even death.

9. The prohibition of alcohol in the early part of this
century financed the birth of the present day criminal
underground. The prohibition of drugs has given incredible
power to the inner city street gangs, and put hundreds of
millions of dollars into their hands. A generation ago, they
fought with knives and brass knuckles. Now they have
submachine guns and high explosives. We have turned our
cities into war zones.

10. Because drug crimes are consensual, with no citizens
filing charges, the government has had to get very creative
to motivate suspects to testify against each other in trial.
Known criminals are routinely paid hundreds of thousands
of dollars, and offered virtual immunity, luxurious perks,
and drastically reduced sentences for their information and
testimony. Barter for perjury is rampant. Our prisons are
full to bursting with innocent victims. More and more,
federal prosecutors are acquiring almost unlimited powers
in the courtroom. They set sentences; they dictate trial
protocol; they have turned purchased betrayal of family
and friends into a high art form. Judges in federal trials are
fast becoming mere automatons.

11. I have reviewed and studied literally hundreds of cases
in preparation for this project, and I keep seeing the same
alarming trend. The drug kingpins and professional
criminals continually plea-bargain their way to freedom, or
leave the country with all their wealth, while the low level
offenders and innocent patsies, with no information to trade
for leniency, and no resources for an adequate defense, are
sentenced to insanely long terms. We are warring on the
afflicted and the vulnerable.

12. In 30 years of The War On Drugs, our government
hasn't managed to accomplish even a small reduction in
drug dealing and abuse, yet we have spent almost a trillion
dollars. ONE TRILLION DOLLARS! That is a huge
fraction of the total national debt. All we've done is fill up
our prisons at a terrifying rate, and pay homage to
meaningless, mean-spirited rhetoric, like Zero Tolerance
and Just Say No and Tough on Crime. By current
estimates, we need to build a complete new federal prison
every two weeks just to keep up with the demand. At the
present exponential rate of incarceration, we will have half
of our population in prison within 50 years. Is this how we
want to greet the new millennium? We will rip this nation
to pieces.

13. It has been estimated that almost 10 percent of
international trade is in profits from illicit substances. Some
third world countries count narco-dollars as a significant
fraction of their gross national product. While the drug war
destroys countless lives among the working and peasant
classes, the privileged elite grows wealthy beyond
imagining. There is a strong economic incentive to keep the
war going ad infinitum. While our elected officials pay lip
service to a drug free America, the CIA is routinely
involved with massive international drug-trafficking to
finance its covert operations.

14. Don't think for a minute that you and your family are
immune, because we don't do drugs. As the criminal
justice juggernaut swells out of control, innocent until
proven guilty has lost all meaning. You can be sucked
into the prison-industrial complex on little more than a
whim, and spend a lifetime trying to find relief. An evening
spent with the wrong crowd; a moment of rebellion or bad
judgment, and your sons and daughters will fall victim. It
has become insanely easy to prove conspiracy based on
mere association and bartered for hearsay. Drugs are
everywhere, from the inner city ghettos to the gated estates
of the privileged classes. One mistake, one moment of
unfortunate coincidence, and your loved ones will be gone,
locked up for 10 years to life. One day soon, it will happen
to you, or your family, or your friends; make no mistake.
This madness must stop now.

***

The above article by the November Coalition was
exhaustively researched and footnoted. References and
other resources regarding the federal war on the American
people are available by contacting the November Coaltion
at: moreinfo@november.org, http://www.november.org or
by calling: (509) 684-1550.

Answers

Neat site. And to think that the War on Drugs cost more than the War
on Y2k. Look at the return. With the latter we get "The Paula" and
Your-done&Toast-ED singing the Gary Duct Tape Songs of "its coming,
run for the hills". With the War on Drugs, we get so little in
entertainment value. Perhaps we should ship "The Paula" to the Drug
Frontlines for her to "analyze" the "Massive Failures" of the War on
Drug Army. She is good at semi-Fiction and Demi-Factoids. But she'd
probably blame it all on "embedded chips".

All the current loony theories in one place. And just like the
proverbial "stopped clock" the above diatribe vs. the "war on drugs"
writer is about 75% correct.

Most conservatives view the war on drugs as proof positive that
Centralized Collectivism is wrong when applied to complex social
problems. For the Conservative, only taking the "profit" out of the
drug trade will end it and the proper way to do that is for the
states to simply legalize drug use. At that point the massive
infrastructure of collusion between drug dealers and those they are
paying off would have to compete on a lowest cost basis. Such
marketplace decisions usually have little room for bribes, payoffs
and the rest of the corruption that the current Drug Trade supports.

That is W. F. Buckley's view condensed. The historical lesson
of "Prohibition" was forgotten when the Politicians whipped up "The
War on Drugs".

However, there is little mention made of any "Y2k Problem". Could
this be one of the fringers who like the JBS rejected the Y2k flakes?
http://proliberty.com/observer/recent.htm#A199904
Recently though, the site seems to have taken a turn into the world
of "sightings" and other weirder collections of misfired synapses.